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November 6, 2015
On Chinese Coal, the UN Vs. The New York Times
Good things come to those who wait, and the waiting is minimal when it comes to the endless stream of entertaining silliness offered by the U.N. climate-change bureaucracy. On November 3, Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, informed us that “China has taken an undisputed leadership” in terms…
September 29, 2015
The Strange Silence About Climate Policy and the Looming Apocalypse
I kid, of course: Silence is the last adjective one would use about climate policy, except with respect to such minor parameters as the actual benefits of various policy prescriptions and the actual evidence of climate impacts, about which more below. Cacophony is more accurate, particularly with the 21st (!) Conference of the Parties looming…
August 5, 2015
President Obama’s Clean Power Plan: All Cost, No Benefit
On Monday President Obama announced the final “clean power plan” regulation for greenhouse gas emissions from electric generating plants, the centerpiece of the broader Climate Action Plan being implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency. Amid the many assertions about the looming climate crisis confronting “the planet,” about which more below, one central parameter was conspicuous by its absence. To wit: What…
July 16, 2015
The Inconvenient Truth About Climate Policy
Climate change is a manmade crisis, and so the need to implement sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is paramount. That summarizes the constant drumbeat of conventional wisdom, which raises an interesting question: If the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan – a 17 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 – were to be implemented immediately, what temperature reduction…
July 7, 2015
Pope Francis, Environmentalists, and Economists on Human Stewardship of the Earth
The many dominant media reports on Pope Francis’ new papal encyclical letter, “Laudato Si’” (“On Care for Our Common Home”), make it clear that the encyclical represents an endorsement of the conventional (or mainstream environmental) view of anthropogenic climate change, with explicit papal support for “enforceable international agreements” (¶173) to deal with the purported attendant adverse future effects. And,…
June 7, 2015
The EPA’s ‘Clean Power’ Mess
‘Flexibility” is the advertised hallmark of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan, which by 2030 would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 30% from 2005 levels. The central feature of the plan is a forced shift away from inexpensive coal-fired power. Not to worry, says EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy: “With EPA’s…
April 28, 2015
The Carbon Tax, and Economists as Experts and Politicians
A colleague from the American Enterprise Institute hosted a well-attended event on Earth Day last week, promoting an edited volume in which a number of authors advocate the implementation of a “carbon” tax. That tax is assumed to be, first, an efficient substitute for the emerging framework of regulations aimed at constraining the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), and, second, part…
April 21, 2015
Earth Day and the Celebration of Suffering
In honor of this 45th anniversary of the first Earth Day, let us recall the wisdom of Dogbert, that noted political philosopher and sage observer of the human condition: “You can’t save the earth unless you’re willing to make other people sacrifice.” As the old saying goes, truer words were never spoken. Earth Day brings each year…
March 25, 2015
The Enforcement of Climate Orthodoxy and the Response to the Asness-Brown Paper on the Temperature Record
Should you, dear readers, doubt that the climate empire strikes back at even the mildest qualifications of greenhouse gas (GHG) orthodoxy, merely consider a recent draft essay by Clifford Asness and Aaron Brown on the recent temperature record and attendant implications for policies to reduce GHG emissions. Titled “It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Tepidity,” the immediate…
February 18, 2015
The Kyoto Protocol: 10 Years of Triumph
Amid the tolling of church bells and the joyous shouts of aspiring bureaucrats, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in December 1997 under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and officially was implemented 10 years ago this week. Under its terms, the parties committed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) 5 percent below…